There's no point in inconveniencing 100% of the player base that pvp's b/c a small % of them sometimes get bots. I've played several years and rarely seen any botters, and when i have i deal with it or leave. People complain pvp is dead now imagine having to authenticate every bg you enter, no thanks. Also to dispute your assumption that im against it b/c im a botter, nope...im against it because it's just not needed.

You realize that small % of them do, themselves, inconvenience 100% of the (BG-ing) player base, right?

Never the less, no matter what sort of 'verification' and inhibitors you can create, people will create work-arounds. :shrugs: *That* is the reason not to bother. It may be effective for a time, but it won't last forever. :shrugs again:

The biggest problems with systems like this is that they don't work.
What blizzard should do is:

Create a report this players as a bot. When somebody gets reported as a bot, they get a popup with a simple question with 3 answers.
You then simply have to answer the question correctly (and then for the rest of the BG you cannot be flagged as a bot again). You get two tries to answer it correctly and if its wrong twice (or you don't answer within 30 seconds each time) you simply get kicked out of the bg and get a strict punishment in the form of not being able to do another BG for 60 minutes.

The biggest problems with systems like this is that they don't work.
What blizzard should do is:

Create a report this players as a bot. When somebody gets reported as a bot, they get a popup with a simple question with 3 answers.
You then simply have to answer the question correctly (and then for the rest of the BG you cannot be flagged as a bot again). You get two tries to answer it correctly and if its wrong twice (or you don't answer within 30 seconds each time) you simply get kicked out of the bg and get a strict punishment in the form of not being able to do another BG for 60 minutes.

This is almost exactly the same as the "system" the OP "made".
Questions do not work against bots, maybe they did 10-15 years ago but not anymore.
Anything that requires you to input data is EASILY EASILY EASILY countered by a bot.

This is almost exactly the same as the "system" the OP "made".
Questions do not work against bots, maybe they did 10-15 years ago but not anymore.
Anything that requires you to input data is EASILY EASILY EASILY countered by a bot.

Depends really on the questions.

For the rest they dont work but otherwise there are almost no systems that will work. You could look for patterns but that is incredibly difficult in a game like wow (its not preventing spam bots on websites which is already difficult but doable).

The biggest problem will stay unless they change the way they detect bots or offer additional filters there is no way to detect bots.
You can search for programs but thats rather pointless to. Bot programs come and go and staying up to date with all of them simply is to resource intensive.

So to get rid of bot programs.. would almost mean a gm in every bg (which would be the only system that is effective) but again cost way way way way way to much to implement.

A bot can easily solve what you are suggesting with small modifications. CAPTCHA can work better, but is not guaranteed to be 100% functional either. What is needed is Blizzard being more active in stopping the bots, I know they are working hard to break the botting software and probably a ban-wave, but that's too little too late imho.

Or you know, just implement a vote to kick system where players can flag others as bots at lower levels, players tagged as bots because they sit at the entrance to Frostwolf Cavern or whatever would forfeit all honor and experience rewards from the match if they are unable to respond to action requests from the server. Or they could just eliminate experience from BG's, that solves the problem and removes the possibility of bots farming experience while not participating.

Congrats to the 8 fools who made the ignore list, your ignorance knows no bounds, bravo!

Or you know, just implement a vote to kick system where players can flag others as bots at lower levels, players tagged as bots because they sit at the entrance to Frostwolf Cavern or whatever would forfeit all honor and experience rewards from the match if they are unable to respond to action requests from the server. Or they could just eliminate experience from BG's, that solves the problem and removes the possibility of bots farming experience while not participating.

The reason experience from bgs was introduced in the first place was to kill twinks, so no on the last suggestion.

As many have stated, no system is foolproof, but user-required interaction like captchas and role checks would at least make botting more expensive.

All this would do is inconvinience everyone with no effect really on botters. Botters would just script an alarm bell to wake them up whatever when this pops up on their screen type it in and walk away again.

When i do bgs at nighttime theres sometimes over 70-80% of the teams played by bots, but tbh most of the time you win more easily when theres bots on your team because they just zerg everyone, maybe its just me but i prefer that compared to casuals playing in greens.

Captchas are a horrible inconvenience for real people - most are incredibly difficult to read. I know that's the point but it also is why I voted no - a huge inconvenience to honest people that just want to play. The problem can be resolved by Blizzard having a bunch of people randomly join various BG's to check for bots. Not even as a visible player, but in GM style where we can't see them but they can see us. Then they could "finger of God" the mofo's and perma-ban their account with a bit of luck.

Blizzard are currently relying solely on the reporting system (which is a very welcome addition) but until they start getting GM's or something to randomly "police" bg's and even prime farming area's, the bot plague will probably continue.

A common argument I see is people saying "no gold buyers, no bots" - this is untrue. There are normal players who enlist bot services to level up their toon's for anything from gear to rank because they cannot give the amount of time required due to RL or whatever. Point is - it's a little more complex than simply "gold buyers = bot demand" (albeit somewhat of a similar vein).

It's not that bad, and it is always worse at the start of an expansion. The best way for blizzard to negate the botting programs is to find out how they work and either break them or detect them early to Ban. It isn't that hard to program a bot if you know what your doing and that in essence is the root of the problem. There are a number of things you could do too help prevent them, but the last thing you want to do is annoy your player base for such a small problem. Because even if you have bots or they have bots, you could still win or lose.

I'm not a fan. Your idea would catch the overnight/while I'm at work botters but at an inconvenience to every wow player. Your idea is also incredibly immersion breaking which is a concern for the few people who still roleplay.